The golden crow sank in the west, slowly leaping among the mountain peaks and forest, carrying away the great brightness. After repairing the winnowing machine, Lin Fugui hurried home, treading on the afterglow of the setting sun.
When he got home, before he even had time to sigh to his family about how strong Old Wan’s son was, the news of his own daughter’s broken engagement was the first to reach his ears, catching him off guard.
No different from the plot in the novel, Lin Fugui’s blood rushed to his head. He immediately wanted to charge over to the Wan family, wishing he could have a fight with Old Wan and give Wan Decai a good beating too.
Seeing this, Lin Cui hurriedly held him back, persuading him with great effort. After all, according to the book’s plot, her family, dissatisfied with the Wan family’s unilateral breaking of the engagement, caused trouble everywhere to vent their anger for her. In the end, they were instead struggled against and severely punished, and ultimately none of them came to a good end—defined as the book’s family of awful villains.
Now that the plot had already been rewritten, Lin Cui naturally had to stop them.
“Father, I still don’t want to marry into the Wan family. Not a single one of them is easy to get along with. Now we can peacefully break off the engagement without affecting my reputation, and someone’s even covering the three major items for my marriage. I’m not at a loss.” Lin Cui explained with a smile. Thinking of how the Wan family had left in anger earlier, she gradually felt reassured. “In short, I didn’t suffer a loss, and you all shouldn’t go do any ‘bad things.’ Our whole family being well—that’s the proper way.”
The whole family was soothed by Lin Cui’s soft words, but the restless stirring in their hearts still burned. Every one of them rolled their eyes, and no one knew what they were scheming.
“That Lin family is utterly shameless! The three major items for marriage require so many industrial coupons, and several hundred yuan too. How do they have the nerve to ask!”
Wang Guiying, who had hurried back to the Wan family in a rage, entered the house, grabbed the chipped enamel mug, and gulped down several mouthfuls of cold water. When she set the mug down, she slammed it heavily onto the flat cabinet with a bang, especially jarring in the silent Wan family main hall.
“Mother, when it comes down to it, this matter is still our fault. After all, Lin Cui was delayed for several years too.” Wan Decai’s mind flashed with that oval face from earlier. He’d originally thought she was an ignorant country village woman, but today she had truly opened his eyes.
Wan Decai couldn’t say what exactly he felt in his heart.
“Decai, what does this matter have to do with you? This betrothal was arranged by me and your father. Besides, what was she delayed for? Even if we break off the engagement now, it won’t delay her finding a partner. Look at this person…” Wang Guiying’s chest heaved unevenly, as if she couldn’t even catch her breath. Her mouth fired like a machine gun, nonstop. “She even brought the matchmaker! Who’s delaying her! And she wants us to pay for her three major marriage items. If we really pay this money, I’ll never sleep a peaceful sleep again!”
Even city people rarely bought all three major items for marriage nowadays. Having even one was respectable, let alone three. This was deliberately trying to empty their family!
Wan Decai listened to the clamor, his heart already irritated. He comforted his mother with a couple of sentences, then turned and left the main hall.
Once the son left, the old woman was still wailing and shouting. Wan Guangfa, who had been quietly puffing his dry tobacco in the corner, knocked his tobacco pouch heavily onto the square table. The room instantly fell silent: “Now that Decai has made something of himself and been promoted to battalion commander, his monthly allowance has increased quite a bit. If the Lin family wants the three major items for marriage, just give them to her. As long as this person doesn’t go around talking nonsense and ruining Decai’s reputation, that’s fine.”
The son’s work and marriage were more important. Wan Guangfa could tell what mattered.
“But those are the three major items!” Wang Guiying was still unwilling to accept it. Just thinking of giving away so many industrial coupons and so much “Great Unity” money made her feel physical pain, heartache—pain everywhere!
“Giving them away doesn’t mean we can’t get them back.” Old Wan took a fierce drag of his dry tobacco, his old eyes narrowing into slits. “We’ll arrange a partner for her to marry—someone easy to control. In the future, why worry the three major items won’t come back to us?”
Wang Guiying’s eyes lit up. She slapped her thigh: “That’s the reasoning! Women marry and follow their husbands—once she’s married, these things won’t be up to her. But… what kind of partner should we arrange for her? Let me think. Oh, I have a distant nephew on my mother’s side who’d be suitable. He’s just over thirty this year. His first wife died, and he still hasn’t remarried. If we introduce him to such a pretty partner, who knows how grateful he’d be to us.”
Old Wan waved his hand: “That Lin family girl isn’t stupid. If you introduce her to a man on his second marriage, would they agree? Let me think—who’d be suitable…”
Before long, a gleam burst from Old Wan’s small eyes. He quickly ordered his wife to go handle things: “Take some sponge cakes and go to Eldest Brother’s room. My own nephew has returned—it’s only proper to go see him.”
“Go see Wan Feng?” Wang Guiying was a hundred percent unwilling. What was there to see about the only son left behind by her husband’s long-dead eldest brother and his wife? “And give him sponge cakes? Isn’t this just idle boredom!”
The wrinkles at the corners of Old Wan’s eyes layered with his smile: “What do you understand! This is exactly someone handing you a pillow when you’re sleepy! Wan Feng didn’t come back early or late—he was found and brought back at just this time, perfect for arranging him with Lin Cui!”
It was as if a flash of light streaked through her mind. Hearing this, Wang Guiying instantly forgot what she was about to say. Her thick lips hung slightly open, as if an egg could be stuffed inside. After a moment, she finally had a sudden realization: “Right! That Wan Feng boy has been a soft egg since childhood—the easiest to control. You’re his only relative now. If he doesn’t listen to you, who will he listen to!”
After all, back then even the martyr subsidies for Wan Feng’s parents had been swindled out of Wan Feng’s hands. This time, once Wan Feng and Lin Cui married, swindling the three major marriage items their family had bought out of Wan Feng’s hands would surely be even easier!
“Let’s go, go, go! Go see your own nephew!” Wang Guiying hurried to grab a few pieces of sponge cake and was about to head out.
The rice-planting task in Liberation Commune was still in full swing. Strong male laborers usually drove old oxen to pull plows and prepare the fields. Lin Fugui led his two sons and a crowd of men working in the fields, turning the soil. Behind them, female laborers were responsible for pulling nylon ropes along the field ridges to set distances, securing them with bamboo poles stuck into the mud.
Song Chunhua was an expert at planting rice. She rolled her pant legs up to her knees and stepped into the flooded field. Lining up with the other commune members, she held a bundle of seedlings in her left hand, gripped the seedlings with her right, bent at the waist, lowered her head, and skillfully inserted them into the field.
In the bare flooded fields, one-foot-tall seedlings gradually stood up. Row after row, column after column, crisscrossing, swaying in the wind—like scattered stars cutting neatly arranged squares, gradually bringing vitality to the fields, carrying the farmers’ hopes for a bountiful harvest.
It was also during rice planting that gossip flew everywhere. Everyone loved to chat casually. These past two days, the most talked-about Wan Decai family had made big news again. First, Wan Guangfa and Wang Guiying had actually taken sponge cakes to visit Wan Feng. Second, Wan Decai and Lin Cui’s marriage was off.
Aunt Hongmei had been a matchmaker for over thirty years. Within ten miles, who didn’t know her? Her mouth—if you said it was reliable, it was reliable; if you said it was loose, then naturally it was loose.
In two or three days’ time, the Wan and Lin families’ betrothal from three years ago had become, in her words, a sworn kinship. Even the news that Battalion Commander Wan doted on this god-sister and was going to cover all three major items for Lin Cui’s marriage had spread everywhere, giving the Wan family no room to go back on their word.
If anyone in the team questioned her, Aunt Hongmei would simply and confidently insist that everyone had remembered it wrong. At worst, she’d tell them to go ask the Wan family themselves—now that he was a battalion commander, could he possibly lie? Especially, who ever heard of someone breaking off an engagement yet still covering the other party’s three major marriage items?
Seeing Aunt Hongmei so certain, the commune members began to doubt themselves. Could it be that the story really had been misrepresented from the start? Yet both families involved now gave the same account. Not to mention, Lin Cui was currently having Aunt Hongmei find her a match. Word had it that Wan Decai was willing to cover Lin Cui’s three major marriage items—a watch, a sewing machine, and a bicycle. Who wouldn’t be dazed hearing that?
One big news item after another. The commune members quickly tossed the two families’ original betrothal to the back of their minds. Quite a few people even planned to go show their faces in front of Lin Cui.
A storm was rising in the village, yet the person at the center of the storm was, at this moment, especially at leisure.
Lin Cui stayed away from the crowd and went up the mountain alone with a back basket. With one hand she used a tree branch to push aside the weeds at her feet along the way, occasionally bending down to pick wild mushrooms beside the bamboo. When she found the tall Chinese toon trees in the wild, Lin Cui pinched off the tender shoots and soon filled most of her back basket.
The green, oily tender shoots were the newly sprouted fresh green. Carried home, they were blanched for thirty seconds, taken out, and squeezed dry. Washed and chopped, then mixed evenly with eggs and flour, and fried as pancakes in an oiled pan.
Today was the day the team’s rice-planting task ended. The flooded fields were already densely covered with seedlings. The commune members, who had been rushing work for days, could finally catch their breath. Lin Cui had also deliberately gone up the mountain to gather Chinese toon to prepare a big meal for the family.
When the Lin family returned from work and stepped into the house, waves of fragrance immediately assailed their noses.
Second brother Lin Wei followed the smell and quickly headed to the kitchen. Seeing a basin of golden Chinese toon egg pancakes with bits of green on the stove, his eyes brightened slightly: “Whoa, that smells good! No wonder I could smell it even in the fields.”
“Second brother, then your nose is really too sharp.” Lin Cui called the family to eat and took the initiative to meet her mother’s gaze, holding up one finger. “Mother, one egg. Not heartache-inducing, right~ There were two old hens that both laid eggs this morning. Counting it up, we got two today. We ate one, so we still came out ahead.”
Song Chunhua felt her little daughter was truly here to torment her, and said with a smile: “Only you know how to do math.”
The Chinese toon egg pancakes were seared golden and crisp on the outside, but one bite revealed a soft, fragrant, tender interior. April Chinese toon was in season, and Lin Cui had picked only the freshest tender shoots. The taste was full of fresh fragrance, tightly wrapped and interwoven with the savory aroma of eggs—how could it not leave a lingering fragrance on the lips and teeth?
Each person in the Lin family had two pancakes. In the end, one remained. Song Chunhua decided to split it in half—half for Lin Cui, half for Lin Xiaobao. After eating the pancakes, everyone gulped down corn porridge with pickles and cleaned it all up, finally making an offering to the temple of their five viscera and six bowels.
After eating, Lin Fugui wiped his mouth and busied himself with his dry tobacco pipe again. His dark, cracked hand stuffed dried, crushed tobacco leaves into the pipe bowl.
He took a deep drag. Smoke rings curled around. Lin Fugui narrowed his eyes, quite enjoying it.
Song Chunhua watched her old man enjoying himself and couldn’t resist sharing the good news with her daughter: “Cuicui, look at how pleased your father is. He had a happy event today.”
Lin Cui carefully recalled the book’s plot. There hadn’t been any happy event in their family recently: “Mother, what happy event did Father have?”
Lin Fugui took a fierce drag on the pipe mouth and said smugly: “It’s not anything big. I just stretched out my leg and tripped Old Wan, making him fall flat on his face—he ended up kneeling and wishing me a happy New Year.”
To prevent her family from walking the old path of the awful villain family and repeating their tragic fate by opposing the Wan family, who had the protagonist’s halo, everywhere, Lin Cui had been earnestly warning them these past few days not to go fight or cause trouble. After all, in the novel, her family suffered defeat after defeat.
In the novel, Lin Fugui, who couldn’t swallow his anger after his daughter’s engagement was broken, charged off to fight the Wan family, and ultimately ended up in the miserable situation of being struggled against for striking first. Now that the plot had been rewritten, Lin Fugui still couldn’t swallow his anger and had quietly tripped the man.
Waving his tobacco pouch in the air, Lin Fugui’s aged face showed a smile: “He still doesn’t know who tripped him. Even if he says I did it, no one saw it! Still, that was letting him off easy, hmph.”
Lin Cui didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at her father’s behavior. Then she turned her head and saw her second brother preparing to sneak away. Lin Cui suddenly thought of something—in the novel, her second brother had also impulsively gone to fight Wan Decai to vent anger over her broken engagement, and had likewise come to no good end.
“Second brother, you didn’t go pick a fight with anyone, did you?” Lin Cui couldn’t help but feel nervous.
Lin Wei waved his hand, looking proud: “Am I that crude a person? How could I possibly go pick a fight!”
Just as Lin Cui’s heart was about to settle back into her stomach, she heard her second brother change tack: “I just ran into Wan Decai and his two comrades this afternoon. He hasn’t been back for years and couldn’t recognize the newly built roads, so I pointed him down a long way around. Heh heh.”
Lin Cui: “…”
There really wasn’t a single easygoing person in her family. Fortunately, it was all minor mischief. After all, the Lin family, once calm, wouldn’t act impulsively.
“Mother, you…” Lin Cui looked next at her own mother, but as soon as she spoke, Song Chunhua cut her off.
Song Chunhua was full of heroic spirit: “I already beat them with a broom that day. What else would I beat?”
True enough!
Lin Cui finally looked toward her eldest brother and sister-in-law’s family.
Among her family, her father and mother—one kept his temper bottled up inside, the other let it out. Second brother Lin Wei took after their mother. Eldest brother Lin Xiang took after their father, even steadier than him, with a rather gentle temperament. Even the sister-in-law he married was easygoing by nature.
But this gentle eldest brother and sister-in-law had likewise, in the novel, grown furious over her broken engagement and gone to the Wan family demanding an explanation, offending the Wan family. In the end, even eldest brother’s occasional part-time work at the brick factory was gone.
“Eldest brother, eldest sister-in-law, you two didn’t do anything, right?” Lin Cui guessed her eldest brother and sister-in-law wouldn’t have done anything major. After all, this matter had already changed course.
Lin Xiang nodded: “We didn’t do anything.”
Sister-in-law Xiang Yufen blinked rapidly and shook her head, wearing a cautious look: “No, nothing… We didn’t do anything bad.”
Surely it didn’t count as doing something bad that she’d splashed laundry wastewater outside the wall that afternoon and accidentally got it on Wang Guiying.
Surely it didn’t count as doing something bad that when Wan Guangfa was yelling about settling scores with her father-in-law, her man Lin Xiang had only blocked Wan Guangfa.
Surely it didn’t count as doing something bad that her son Lin Xiaobao had peed at the Wan family’s doorstep and soaked their drying firewood.